Minor Corruption Read online

  “All right, my children, it’s time for the games to begin!”

  At this exhortation the nymphs and dryads instantly became children once more. They cheered and chattered, and broke into their constituent groups. Pan himself, with a satisfied smile, sat down cross-legged on the knoll and proceeded to observe the games, whose nature and rewards had been predetermined by the Baldwin boys and under whose aegis they were to be executed. The adults, after giving Uncle Seamus a well-deserved round of applause, moved their chairs over to that part of the lawn where the various races and contests were to take place. Beth excused herself in order to slip a short ways off and once again feed Junior before he began making his own brand of music.

  Marc noticed the two young maids begin to edge over in his direction, but they were summarily brought back to the business of clearing the luncheon tables by their superior, Miss Faye Partridge, a mannish-looking woman in her late thirties with a wizened face and a permanent glower. Marc felt sorry for Edie and Betsy, who could be no more than fifteen or sixteen years of age. They were children too, but compelled by necessity to perform adult drudgeries. Still, Robert had seen to it that they had had a share of the ice cream and had been encouraged to join Diana’s sing-along.

  The games lasted almost an hour, and were ajudged a success even though two skinned knees in the sack race and a bruised elbow in the wheelbarrow event threatened to bring the party to a halt. Eliza and two other younger girls found the excitement too much, and were seen sitting in the grass near Pan the piper, pretending not to doze. Robert gave out the prizes with unashamed generosity: trinkets and toys lovingly wrapped in tissue and tied up with ribbon by Diana Ramsay days before the event. Robert would miss her as much as his four children would when she finally left to marry Brodie Langford. (A woman’s touch was needed around Baldwin House, but Robert had had only one love, and she had been taken from him.) When the last bauble had been given out, to one of the mill lads, Robert looked over the gathering and opened his mouth in order to announce that the party was over. But it was the voice of Uncle Seamus, who had not stirred from his Buddha-like position on the knoll, that carried over the assembly.

  “We can’t end a birthday party,” he shouted, bouncing to his feet, “without a game of Blind Man’s Buff!”

  Tired and sated as they were, the children seemed energized merely by the sound of the piper’s voice and the sheer possibility that he might raise the fife to his lips and improvise a jig. Which he did, in a brief flurry of pretty notes.

  The children cheered and ran towards him. His blue eyes danced.

  “Now who’s gonna tie this scarf tight around my eyes?” he called out, pulling a green scarf from around his throat and letting it flutter between a thumb and a forefinger.

  “Me! Me! Me!”

  Uncle Seamus laughed heartily and handed the scarf to the nearest tot. He squatted down until she was able to reach up and wrap it loosely around the upper half of his face, making the bell on his cap tinkle.

  “Now I need a strong young fella to tie it tight,” he chuckled. “We don’t want any peeking, do we?”

  A chorus of “no’s!” confirmed this conclusion, and Fabian Cobb stepped up and drew the folded scarf back until it was opaque and snug, and then tied a perfect reef knot to hold it in place.

  At this moment, a small female voice called from the far side of the knoll, “Can we play, Uncle Seamus?”

  “Edie Barr, you keep yer mouth shut or I’ll wash it out with soap!” The naysayer was Miss Partridge, the senior maid.

  “Let the girls join in,” Uncle Seamus shouted. “And anyone else here who’s not forgotten how to be a child!”

  Robert nodded in the direction of the two maids, and cautiously they moved into the gaggle of boys and girls surrounding Uncle Seamus. Uncle Seamus let out a whoop, tucked his fife in his belt, and began to lurch and lunge towards the children, who taunted and teased, as children have always done, just beyond the blind grasping of his fingers. Close calls produced shrieks of joyful terror or yips of satisfaction. Uncle Seamus played his role for all it was worth. His gestures were exaggerated and deliberately clownish. He hopped about with his knees bent spider-like and his arms waving like the tentacles of an octopus, and all the while hissing out a futile “Gotcha!” Whenever a tardy child did come within his reach, he pretended to stumble over a tussock of grass and let the laggard squeal away. The children were frantic with delight. Their clamour swelled to a maelstrom of uninhibited cries, like a Greek chorus that had lost its conductor. The adults looked on, open-mouthed.

  Suddenly the tumult ceased. The blind old fellow had caught someone. He was clutching her waist with his bony claws. The others watched in disbelief: the game had turned. The captive stood stock-still. It was Edie Barr, her baby face and blond curls a vivid contrast with her dark maid’s uniform. She was holding her breath and trembling.

  “You gotta guess who it is!” shouted the birthday girl, and her suggestion was taken up by the other participants until it became an insistent chant.

  “Ah, now, that’s gonna be easy, isn’t it?” Uncle Seamus cried, and he began moving his hands down along the girl’s waist and hips, his fingers tracing but never touching their quarry.

  “It’s a large boy! Right?”

  “No!” came the roar of denial and delight.

  The fingers now moved up the front of the girl’s body, again they lingered and wriggled, to instant laughter from the jury, but did not touch. Then Edie appeared to totter abruptly and contact was made in several, and highly inappropriate, places. It lasted for no more than a second or two, but no-one watching, even casually, would have missed the emboldened widening of the girl’s eyes and the sudden stiffening of Piper Pan’s fingers.

  “It’s Miss Partridge!” he trilled.

  The hysterical response of the boys and girls doubled them over with laughter. Quick as a wink, Uncle Seamus’s fingers were up over the girl’s spray of curls, and he wheeled about and just before whipping off his blindfold, shouted, “It’s Betsy Thurgood!”

  “Wrong again!”

  “You lose!”

  “Put the mask back on, you’re still it!”

  Uncle Seamus – his wrinkled, rubbery features set in a calculated grin – sank slowly to his haunches and threw his hands in the air. “Thank you, children, for a most exhilarating afternoon. But your old uncle is all elved out.”

  Robert took the cue, and within minutes the children were being herded, happy but reluctant, towards the house. Meanwhile, Marc took notice of two events that might easily have gone unremarked. As she walked away from the slumped figure of Uncle Seamus, Edie Barr turned and gave him a look that was part puzzlement and part reproof. Then she glanced at Betsy Thurgood as if somehow it were her fault that she had been named captive out there, even though the girls were unalike, opposites even. Where Edie was shapely and tall and luxuriously blond, Betsy was plump and short with straight brown hair arranged in bangs. When Betsy smiled and tried to take her friend’s hand, Edie pulled away and ran towards the house. Then, at the back door, with Maggie in his arms, Marc looked back for a moment and saw, to his surprise, Uncle Seamus still seated on the grass, his head between his knees. Exhaustion? Or something else?

  ***

  Robert was standing in the doorway of the library as Marc and his party were moving down the hall towards the foyer. “Marc, could you spare me five minutes before you go? It’s urgent.”

  “Politics?” Marc said with a half-smile.

  “Only indirectly.”

  “Isn’t that usually the case?”

  “Alas.”

  “Give me a minute to visit the water-closet,” Marc said.

  “I’ll wait for you in here, then.”

  Marc handed Maggie over to Diana, apologized to Beth for his being delayed, and then found the smaller hallway that led to the water-closet. On his way back, he passed an open door and overheard this exchange:

  “But if he loves me, why did he i
nsult me by callin’ out your name?”

  “He don’t love you like that, Edie. He don’t love nobody like that. He’s a nice old gentleman.”

  Edie snorted. “You’ve got a lot to learn about men!”

  There was no immediate response to this remark, and Marc was just about to carry on to the library when he heard a girl’s snuffle that quickly turned to weeping.

  “I’m sorry, Betsy. I really am. My mom says I got a big mouth and a tart tongue. But you are younger than me, ya know.”

  A maid’s tiff, Marc thought, the kind he had heard often during his childhood on his adoptive uncle’s estate in Kent. He sighed, and headed for the library.

  ***

  Robert came straight to the point. “It’s my uncle, Marc. He’s getting to be a problem here and could soon be a bigger one in the city.”

  “I don’t follow. How can he be of concern, isolated as he is out here in the countryside?”

  Robert frowned and looked decidedly uncomfortable. But he was not a man to back away from trouble or his duty. “You saw how he behaved out there.”

  “A man in his second childhood, I’d surmise, enjoying the children he didn’t have in his other life.”

  “If that were only the whole story . . .”

  “Seamus was a lawyer, wasn’t he? And a bachelor?”

  “He was married as a young man, but his wife died in childbirth along with the babe. He never remarried.”

  “Stuck to the law?”

  “Yes. As a solicitor, doing the dog-work for a prestigious firm in Cork. And leading a narrow, monotonous, constricted life, I’m afraid.”

  “With a personality unsuited to that kind of life?”

  “In the extreme. My grandfather forbade him to pursue his first love: the stage. Well, last winter he suffered a nervous breakdown of sorts and abruptly retired – alone after thirty-five years service.”

  “He had your family back in Ireland, did he not?”

  “Over the years he had become increasingly estranged from them, and then when he needed them most – ”

  “They were not there for him?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So your father suggested he might as well come out to the colony, where a ready-made and loving family awaited him?”

  “My father is as perceptive as he is kind. He believed that because he and Uncle Seamus were close as children and he had known him well that my children and their many friends would be the tonic he needed to restart his life. After a furious exchange of letters and exhortations, he agreed to emigrate.”

  “And it’s obvious, is it not, that the fellow loves children. And yours are out here every weekend and a good deal of the summertime. So what’s the problem?” Marc had a pretty good idea what the problem was, but he was hoping against hope that he was mistaken.

  Robert smiled grimly. “I don’t believe for a second that you did not see the inappropriateness of some of his behaviour today.”

  “It looked to me as if the girl deliberately leaned into him,” Marc said carefully.

  “Perhaps. But it was he who invited the maid to play and he knew full well who he was grappling with. He has played this parlour game before, and he can see quite well through that fake blindfold.”

  “And you think his hands lingered a bit too long where they shouldn’t have?”

  Robert sighed. “He does a ventriloquist act at parties, using Edie or Betsy as his dummy, sitting on his knee and flapping their lips whenever he pokes them in the back. I must admit it’s hilarious, and our guests love it and the girls, especially Edie, don’t seem to mind. But good Lord, Marc, the man is sixty years old! And my housemaids are barely sixteen!”

  “Perhaps you need to talk to him. Clear the air. Set some limits on his behaviour.”

  “You’re right. And my father and I want nothing more than to do just that. But we’re also fearful of undoing the gains he has made thus far in restoring his mental and physical health. He was deeply depressed and melancholic when he first arrived. But after that display today, we may have no other choice.”

  “Perhaps you could replace the maids with more mature servants.”

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

  Robert knew his friend too well. Both he and Marc felt strongly about employing girls whose family life and grinding poverty made escape their only option. Edie Barr and Betsy Thurgood were the daughters of nearby mill-hands, who themselves led a hardscrabble existence. Robert would no more think of sending his young servants home penniless any more than Marc would have returned Charlene Huggan (now Mrs. Hogg) to her abusive father in Cobourg.

  “No, of course not,” Marc said, sitting down. To this point the two men had been standing beside the big mahogany table that dominated the book-lined room. Robert joined him. “But if it is even remotely possible that your uncle has a prurient interest in these girls, then you must act to protect them. They are in a real sense your wards.”

  “That’s what has made the past few weeks so agonizing for my father and me. We are devout Christians, and we take the guardianship of those in our care as a solemn responsibility. So far we have made certain that my uncle’s contact with the servants is formal and usually within sight of others.”

  Marc was tempted to mention the conversation he had just overheard, but felt it was unfair to prejudice either Betsy or Edie on the basis of a twenty-second bit of dialogue for which he had no context. Besides, Robert already had his suspicions about the potential improprieties. Instead, he said, “You hinted earlier in the hall that there was an indirect political implication in this business. I don’t see any except the possibility that a scandal might occur that would tarnish the magic of the Baldwin name among Reformers in the province.”

  “I plan to make sure that does not happen, but there is a further and more imminent issue.”

  “And that is?”

  Robert reached for the macaroon dish he always kept to hand and whose contents he used like worry beads. “Uncle Seamus wants to help out in chambers. The truth is he is no longer melancholy, but simply bored.”

  “But I thought he liked the outdoors: hiking and trout fishing and that sort of thing.”

  “He does. And with duck and goose hunting coming up, I figured he’d be well amused. But not so. He’s determined, he says, to pay his way.”

  “But I assumed it was the law that drove him nearly crazy,” Marc said.

  “True, but he feels he needs to earn his keep,” Robert said with a resigned sigh. “He knows that you and I and my cousin Bob are increasingly involved in politics, leaving the day to day running of the firm in the overworked hands of Peachey and our clerks. I don’t see how I can refuse his offer. So far I’ve put him off by saying that we won’t need extra help until the assizes begin in two weeks. He’s agreed to wait.”

  “But aside from the fact that the work might set back his progress or that he may turn out to be more of a burden than a help to us, what is there to worry about in the larger sense?”

  “You saw the man out there today. Even without the presence of children, who do set him off in dramatic fashion, the fellow loves to play pranks and practical jokes. And my four children and two young maids will be right next door. I’m afraid he will materially disrupt the work of chambers at a time when you, I and Francis must begin devoting all our energies to the coming elections and maintaining our alliance with Louis.”

  Robert was alluding to Louis LaFontaine, the leader of the radical rouge party in Quebec, and to the secret alliance that he, Marc and Francis Hincks had hammered out last winter. As the date for the proclamation of the united colony approached and the elections that must ensue shortly thereafter, Robert, as leader of the Upper Canadian Reformers, was spending more and more of his time writing to and visiting ridings across the province. He was hoping to drum up support for the nomination of strong candidates, ones who would also show a willingness to work with their French counterparts as the struggle for a responsib
le form of government continued. Increasingly he had been asking Marc either to accompany him or had been going off on his own as far afield as Windsor or Cornwall. That left Robert Baldwin Sullivan as the lone barrister in the firm and Clement Peachey as the sole solicitor. And while Robert didn’t need the money generated by his law practice (the family was well off), he was loath to give it up. For although he was the only man whom Reformers of all stripes trusted, he had not sought leadership nor did he enjoy it. Always he saw himself doing his duty and then retiring to the more peaceful satisfactions of his chambers.

  “No need to worry,” Marc said with more assurance than he felt. “Let me take your uncle under wing when he arrives in town. I’m not due for any travel until the end of October. In that way you’ll be free to move about as you’re needed. I’ll see to Uncle Seamus in the city while you and your parents look out for him in the country.”

  Robert smiled, as fully as he ever did. “I was hoping you would say that. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “I’ll accept the compliment after the event,” Marc said.

  A pre-emptive squeal from Maggie in the crowded foyer drew Marc back to his primary duties. “My daughter says it is time to go home.”

  As they were settling in the brougham – Brodie, Diana, Maggie and Junior – Beth turned to Marc with a small shudder and whispered, “Did you see the look on that girl’s face when Seamus touched her?”

  TWO